Keith removes his hand from my thigh and snakes it around my shoulders, pulling me into his side. “We know, honey, we know.”

“Thank god that old bitch’s funeral is tomorrow,” Sondra says. “I’ll be there in two days, Win. Two more days. Five more and this will all be over.”

“You can stay here the rest of our stay,” Dottie offers.

“Shit, you guys. This is what I didn’t want. Sondra’s getting married! I do not want my drama overshadowing her big day.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sondra says. “The wedding is a wash, anyway.”

Keith tilts his head as an epiphany dawns on him. “Why aren’t we Facetiming her?”

“Because it was a covert-op mission.” Dottie smiles, lifting an eyebrow.

“Is it too late to cancel the wedding and go to the courthouse?” Sondra says.

“YES!” Dottie, Keith, and I shout in unison.

NINETEEN

ALECK

Ever feel like every single thing you touch risks self-implosion, purely from your contact? It’s an awful feeling. My skin crawls with the premonition of looming dread, telling me something shitty is on the horizon. A feeling I know well but haven’t felt in years. I’ve spent a lot of time and trained myself to stay away from situations that lure me into this feeling.

How quickly pleasure can turn to pain.

Two nights ago, I spent the night and early morning inside Winter Sommers. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened after I entered that woman. I knew it would be good—correction, I knew it would be fantastic—and it was. The sex, yeah, it was fucking mind-bending. But the feelings… Now they fester inside me like a growing illness.

First, I felt it in my head… the lightheadedness, the confusion, the feeling that I’m not in control. Nowhere near it, actually.

Then my limbs suffered. Sweaty palms, an orgasm I couldn’t fucking control, eyes that can’t seem to blink around her… It was painstakingly irritating.

It moved on to my chest, seizing the part of me I’ve kept under strict watch since I learned people can control how it beats. No one is in charge of my feelings, my lust, my fear, and anger, but me.

Until now.

Everything about the person I’ve created since I became a Fox is unraveling. And I blame it all on Winter fucking Sommers, the siren with big brown eyes and blood-red lips. I didn’t just fuck her, I gave her a direct line to my heart. I melted into her, touched her, kissed her, smelled her, devoured her. And she did the same to me. We breathed each other, became each other until we were one entity.

I told her things about my life I’ve never said out loud. I’ve spent the last twenty-two years erasing the person I was before I became Aleck Fox. And in one and a half weeks’ time, Winter has chipped away at my control until two nights ago, when she completely shattered it, making me realize just how not in control I am.